Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Michael Gove ‘100% convinced’ no more Tory MPs will defect to Ukip

"Any more defections, following those of Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell, will provoke a crisis in the Conservative party"................................ends

Ohhh Yeah, DREAM ON BUDDY.

Michael you arent by any chance putting up to be the next leader of the Conservatives are you???.

THE NASTY PARTY AT WORK AGAIN.20/11/2014

Iain Duncan Smith laughed at rape victim’s plight

How much longer must we tolerate this spiteful little thug?

From LabourList: “A victim of domestic violence – for her own safety, she’s known only as A – is taking the government to court. The reason? Because she’s being hit by the Bedroom Tax.

“The ‘spare room’ that the government want to penalise her for having is a specially adapted ‘Panic Room’. It’s there to provide a safe space for her and her child if her abusive ex-partner – who has raped and assaulted her – tries to cause her further harm. It has been specially adapted as a safe and secure space by the police.

“And yet the government want to hit her with the Bedroom Tax, because – as far as they’re concerned – she’s not making full use of her ‘spare’ room.

“Unfathomably, Iain Duncan Smith is defending the DWP and the government – having argued (without success) at a hearing in June that it should be dismissed.

“Today Ed Miliband rose in the chamber to challenge David Cameron on this grotesque case – the cherry on top of the disgusting Bedroom Tax cake. And what did the Prime Minister do? He defended the decision. He claimed that money had been made available for such cases.

“And yet if that’s the case why is A having to go to court to defend her own home? To defend her own safety? To defend her child?

This government are willing – way beyond the point where any rational person has departed from their argument – to argue in favour of the Bedroom Tax. The lives ruined and the families crushed under the weight of this draconian legislation are collateral damage. And all because they’re unwilling to accept that there simply aren’t enough affordable homes in the UK – or do anything about this fact.

“And how did Iain Duncan Smith, the villain (quite literally, a villain) of this piece react to Miliband’s questioning? According to Labour MP Fiona O’Donnell, the response of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was to laugh.

Laughter.

As Ed Miliband spelled out the horrendous case – which this government are responsible for, caused and defends – of a woman trying to stay safe from her abusive, rapist ex-partner, Iain Duncan Smith laughed.

If you were trying to sum up the ills of this government in one simple act, that laughter might just be it.

Half of all benefit claimants sent on placements turn up to work

Claimants face having their benefits stopped for not turning up to training and work placements


By Holly Watt, Whitehall Editor

2:23PM GMT 20 Nov 2014

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Only half of all benefit claimants ordered to go on work placements or training actually turn up, according to new figures released by the Department of Work and Pensions.


The claimants face having their benefits stopped for failing to turn up to four-week work schemes or training.


The Employment Minister Esther McVey said that it was vital that jobseekers attended the placements to “hold up their end of the bargain”.


Job Centre staff have been given the power to force anyone claiming unemployment benefits to take part in “mandatory work activity” designed to get them used to working from nine to five.


Most of the placements are with charities or involve a form of community service, such as helping to maintain parks. Those who refuse to take part or fail to turn up have their £67.50 benefit halted.


However, the new figures show that of the 251,200 people told to undertake the “Mandatory Work Activity”, only 105,610 started their placements.

Of the 899,760 told to turn up to “skills conditionality” training, only 492,980 attended. Some people may be waiting to take part in the training or work placements.

“The majority of jobseekers do everything they can to find work - and that’s reflected in the record levels of employment we’re seeing across the country,” said Miss McVey.

“But there are still many claimants our advisers identify who will benefit from extra support to improve their skills, or who could find their feet by spending a few weeks in a workplace - which is why it’s vital that jobseekers work with us and hold up their end of the bargain.”

Miss McVey pointed out that there are 680,000 vacancies in the economy.

“We work closely with businesses to design our programmes so that they get the skills and employees they need, and I’d remind the tiny minority who wilfully refuse the support on offer that taxpayers expect them to do so in return for benefits,” she said.

The system was launched after a pilot scheme four years ago found that one in five who were ordered to take part in four-week community projects stopped claiming immediately. Another 30 per cent never turned up and had their Jobseekers’ Allowance axed.

Government officials were said to have been shocked by the figures, which they believed proved that a core group of claimants have no intention of working. Officials strongly suspected the no-shows were people already working on the black market.

The trial was deemed so successful that the scheme was rolled out nationwide in May 2011.

post removed widening thread for some reason.

Labour shadow minister accused of 'contempt for working classes' over white van tweet

Emily Thornberry was attacked after she tweeted a picture of a white van outside a house draped in the St George's Cross with the caption 'image from #Rochester'


By Georgia Graham, Political Correspondent

4:38PM GMT 20 Nov 2014

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A Labour front-bencher has been forced to apologise after being accused of holding working class voters in "contempt" by appearing to mock a terraced family home draped in England flags.


Emily Thornberry, a close ally of Ed Miliband and the party's shadow attorney general, was on the by-election campaign trail in Rochester and Strood when she Tweeted a photo of the house accompanied by the caption "image from #Rochester".


Mrs Thornberry, who lives in a £3million home in Islington, North London, told The Telegraph that she thought that the image was "remarkable" because she had never seen a house "completely covered in flags before".


However, three hours later she issued an apology after Ed Miliband intervened and made it "very clear" that he believes people should be able to fly the England flag with pride.


She faced public backlash and was even criticised by members of her own party for posting the image, which will fuel concerns that Labour has lost touch with working class voters.



Image from #Rochester pic.twitter.com/rOjTgpskmF
— Emily Thornberry MP (@EmilyThornberry) November 20, 2014

Twitter reacted with fury:




What's that sound? It's every Labour Parliamentary Candidate in the country facepalming. Henceforth called "The Thornberry Reaction"
— Martin White (@martinwwhite72) November 20, 2014




Emily Thornberry will probably get a Tetanus jab when she leaves Rochester.
— Ben (@Jamin2g) November 20, 2014




It's around now that Ed Miliband will remember meeting a white van man draped in England flags while walking on Hampstead Heath, #Thornberry
— Justin Dunn (@justindunn) November 20, 2014




Ahem, Labour MP Emily Thornberry tweets her contempt for the working classes live from Rochester #ukip pic.twitter.com/UpZamPMtlP
— Seat of Mars (@seatofmars) November 20, 2014




"@EmilyThornberry: Image from #Rochester pic.twitter.com/ppurXZPUXV" MP never seen a white van or national flag before. A tad out of touch?
— Christopher Gage (@ChristophGage) November 20, 2014

She was offered some advice:




Emily Thornberry should just say I thought it was great to see such a display of patriotism. Lot of inference of what she meant.
— Lewis James Brown (@LewisJamesBrown) November 20, 2014

And even some measured support:




Not a smart move from Thornberry, but for what it's worth Pickles is wrong. St George's Cross isn't a unifying symbol.
— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) November 20, 2014




So, we've just decided Emily Thornberry was being nasty based on... what? She's tweeted a bunch of bland pics, what makes that one so bad?
— Charlie Lindlar (@charlielindlar) November 20, 2014

But for the most part people were just annoyed.

Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, told Mailonline: "Everyone will know exactly what she meant by that comment. I think she was being derogatory and dismissive of the people. We all know what she was trying to imply.

"I’ve talked about this previously. It’s like the Labour party has been hijacked by the north London liberal elite and it’s comments like that which reinforce that view."

Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary said: “Whatever one’s class, colour or creed, the St George’s flag is a unifying symbol for our nation. Don’t knock it"

Others said the message represented a "insight into the minds of Labour."

A Labour spokesman initially said that he did not see the problem with the picture.

Mrs Thornberry told The Telegraph shortly after posting the image: "My point is that it's a remarkable image of a house completely covered in flags. I grew up on a council estate and I have never seen a house completely covered in flags before. There's three of them."

However, she was later forced to make an embarrassing climb-down. "I apologise for any offence caused by the 3 flag picture. People should fly the England flag with pride."

Michael Heaver, a Ukip Spokesman, Tweeted: "If you don't want snobby Labour MPs knocking on your door ahead of May's election, stick an England flag up."

Anyone tried deers penis like Kendra tonight on I'm a celebrity get me out of here. :-))

THORNBERRY resigns after bollocking from Ed Milliband and good god shes gone.

What a snob she is.

She should be with the Tories.

LOL! LOL! LOL!

Im a Celebrity pity that lad from Coronation Street has had to go.

Hasnt the egg women been in it before???????

I thought she had been in the show before goldfinger. She was in Strictly Come Dancing.

Miss McVey pointed out that there are 680,000 vacancies in the economy.




LOL !

Emily Thornberry resigns from shadow cabinet over Rochester tweet

Labour MP accused of snobbery after posting photo of house with St George flags and white van parked outside



Rowena Mason, political correspondent


The Guardian, Thursday 20 November 2014 22.40 GMT








Senior Labour MP Emily Thornberry has resigned from Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet after being accused of snobbery when she tweeted a picture of a house decked out in St George’s flags.

The shadow attorney general, who represents Islington South and Finsbury, initially defended posting the picture, which she took while out campaigning in the Rochester and Strood byelection. She later posted a message apologising if she had caused offence.

However, hours later, she stepped down from her role in Labour’s top team, after party sources made clear that Miliband was furious about the tweet.

The row is set to create a media furore the day after the Rochester byelection, which is likely to show Nigel Farage’s populist insurgents Ukip triumph over the Conservatives and the other established political parties.




Another fat old labour rich bitch tells it all about the plebs
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/20/emily-thornberry-resigns-rochester-tweet-labour-shadow-cabinet

Dont believe any figures from this Tory Coalition, they are the most Deceptive government ever, and IDS and his department are 100% liars.

Will more rats leave the sinking Tory ship? 20/11/2014


John Baron

According to the Daily Express, Six Tory MPs [will] defect to Ukip if it wins [the] Rochester and Strood by-election.

If it’s true, doesn’t it say everything you need to know about the kind of person who joins the Conservative Party these days? They’re not interested in helping anybody else. They’re not even interested in helping the party that got them into Parliament. They only want to help themselves.

The Express reckons John Baron, MP for Basildon and Billericay, might be next to cross the floor. If this is true, it will be just about the only thing he’ll have done that is worthy of public attention since he became an MP in 2001.

According to Wikipedia, he supported David Davis in the 2001 and 2005 Tory leadership elections (no fan of Cameron, then), and he has been consistent in opposing wars in Iraq and Libya. Then there’s this: “In June 2012, Baron delivered a letter, signed by over 100 Tory MPs, to the Prime Minister David Cameron urging him ‘to place on the Statute Book before the next General Election a commitment to hold a referendum during the next Parliament on the nature of our relationship with the European Union’.”

That’ll be the UKIP connection, then.

It seems a bit tenuous, though. Also, this is the paper that reckons 40 per cent of Labour voters are going over to UKIP, which is a bit surprising. Why would anyone support a party whose members like to call Labour supporters “You lefties”?

Look at what Mark Reckless, whose defection to UKIP triggered the by-election, had to say: “There are many Labour voters who would never have considered voting for me because I was a Tory. Now I am UKIP they are willing to vote for me to rep­resent them. The Tory label was holding me back. I feel now I have been set free.”

What a lot of bilge.

The verdict? Well, we’ll only find out if UKIP wins, won’t we?

UKIP WALK IT DESPITE TORIES THROWING THE KITCHEN SINK AT ROCHESTER.

3,000 majority.

Labour down just 11.8% and not the 15% the Tory Press expected.

Further defections for sure now was the word from the experts in the early hours of the morning after the results.

Remember ROCHESTER was nos 271 target on UKIP list.

Devious Dave will be shit-ing himself this morning.

This could open the floodgates.

Meanwhile labour are expected to appoint a new Attorney General today or this weekend.

A labour insider commented its good to see her go, she was too snobby for the position ,we need a top piece of totty taking her place.

It will have no material effect on our electability and will be forgotten in 24 hours whilst the Tories have one big head ache going up to the General Election.

news press........

Rochester by-election result: Ukip wounds the Tories, Labour falls on its sword

Mark Reckless eventually triumphed for Ukip but it was Twitter, not the voters, who drew the first blood


By Tom Rowley, Special Correspondent, in Rochester

4:20AM GMT 21 Nov 2014

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And then there were two. Shortly after 4am this morning, Mark Reckless bounded on to a podium opposite a basketball hoop in a sports hall near Rochester, grinning almost as wildly as Nigel Farage as he was named Ukip’s second-ever MP.


"We've proved tonight that we can win [nationwide]," said the new MP for Rochester and Strood, who also happens to be the old MP for Rochester and Strood, only Ukip's 271st most winnable seat.


Earlier, he had been assailed by cameramen asking him to put his thumbs up. "I don't want to do anything that could seem like overconfidence," he said, before admitting he had no "contingency plan" in case he lost the election.


In the end, such concerns seemed trivial, as he won 42 percent of the votes cast. Though less emphatic a victory than that predicted by pollsters and even some sources within the party itself, Ukip still enjoyed a seven point lead over the Conservatives.


David Cameron had visited five times and yet more Conservative MPs, led by Grant Shapps, were in the constituency on Thursday. But it didn't work. The party had indeed "thrown the kitchen sink" at the campaign, but it still lost out.


Still, Kelly Tolhurst, a local businesswoman who stood as the Tory candidate, insisted she had no regrets about running. “Absolutely not,” she said. “It's been a great experience and I will continue to keep fighting for my hometown.”

Until Thursday night, Mrs Tolhurst’s potential career as an MP might have been expected to be the greatest casualty of this campaign. But what a difference a tweet makes.

For, in this battle of Rochester, Twitter, not the voters, drew the first blood. While Ukip defenestrated the Tories by pinching its local figurehead, Mr Reckless, Labour simply fell on its sword.

Shortly after quarter past ten on Thursday evening, a Labour party official sprinted from the counting hall looking glum. A few minutes later it became clear why: Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, had resigned after posting a tweet of a house in the constituency adorned with three St George’s flags that some interpreted as sneering.

Even a few years ago, this would have been the sort of slow-burning row that might have rumbled on for a day or two. With Twitter, it is not a week but a day that is a long time in politics.

Mrs Thornberry resigned just seven hours and four minutes after posting her original message. These days, that is the time it takes for a misjudgement to be retweeted into a row and then hyped into a resigning offence. How nostalgic MPs must be for the days when their main complaint used to be “rolling news” channels, and the endless minutes of airtime they needed to fill.

In the end, Labour won 17 percent of the vote, a poor showing in a constituency the party held (albeit with different boundaries) until 2010. But Mrs Thornberry ensured that the spotlight was back on her party hours before this result was declared, gifting Ukip a self-inflicted scalp.

It was the latest gaffe of this very long campaign. When King John laid siege to Rochester in 1215, rebel barons held out for two months before they were finally starved out. This time around, the self-styled insurgents were victorious, but the battle rumbled on for two months once again.

Arriving in the constituency early on Thursday morning, this sheer length of the campaign was seized upon by Nigel Farage to excuse Mr Reckless's apparent slip-up this week when he made remarks at a hustings that some interpreted as support for repatriation.

Mr Farage was determined to draw a line under the affair. “Our position is clear, it’s been clear for 10 years," he said, posing in a Bayeux Tapestry tie outside Ukip HQ. “Anyone that is here illegally wouldn’t be asked to leave the country, of course not. Anybody who is here illegally, would. It’s very simple.”

Well, if you substitute “legally” for “illegally” in his first sentence, that is.

Even Mr Farage, it seemed, was getting rather tired. “It’s jut gone on and on and on,” he admitted. "It’s been pretty gruelling. For all the candidates, it is almost too much to bear.”

What about the poor voters? They were called the “People’s Army”, but the mood here this morning is less of triumph than relief. Not that Ukip has won, but that at last it’s all over.

This has been the paradox of the campaign: Ukip has capitalised on voters’ complaints that they feel neglected by Westminster, whether over their concerns about immigration or more local matters such as a proposed development of 5,000 new homes. But now that the place is heaving with politicians – with each professing that they are more desperate than the last to listen to local opinion – the people of Rochester are clamouring for a little of their previous obscurity.

On Thursday, there were so many politicians on Rochester’s high street that they inevitably began canvassing each other. John Hayes, the transport minister, even bounded up to me, thinking I was a local voter, proffering a Conservative leaflet. I explained his mistake, so he tried again – only to find he had just asked for the endorsement of one of Mr Farage’s bodyguards.

Ukip has made immigration the central issue of this campaign, but the main influx this week has been of Kippers themselves, as well as the legion of foreign film crews following them round. Outside HQ on Thursday, I struggled in vain to find more than one activist from Rochester: the rest had been bussed in from Northamptonshire, Norwich, Dorset – even Cork.

“Is there anyone who actually lives in Rochester?” one, up from Southampton, asked me. “Everybody’s here a foreigner.” Oh, the irony.

Even in Chatham’s “Private Shop”, with its blacked-out windows and 18-plus clientele, one could not avoid the by-election. “People have been talking about it in here,” said a weary assistant, Nicholas Sandy, leaning on a counter beside a row of adult films. “We’re not here for politics.”

Who did their customers support? “We get everything in here.” Indeed.

Desperate to find some ordinary voters, I got in the car and headed for an out-of-the-way polling station, the yacht club in the village of Hoo. Who was standing there, chuckling with the Ukip teller? Nigel Farage. “You’ve lucked out here,” he boomed at me. Even here, Kippers were the sole item on the menu.

Both Mr Farage and Mr Reckless spent an awful lot of the time just shaking their supporters’ hands. A waste of time?

“If it was a parliamentary election, I would be spending quite a lot of the day knocking up voters, trying to encourage people to come out to vote,” explained Mr Reckless. “But the scale of the several hundred people I have from across the country today means there is less of a premium on my time… But it’s very important to thank the troops.”

In the end, his optimism was not ill-founded. The question now is, can the party possibly field the same number troops in all the seats it wants to win next year?

After being thanked by Mr Farage, that teller in Hoo, Charlie Winstanley from Brighton, said he was thrilled with his visit from the leader. “The people’s army is trundling on,” he said, before changing his mind. “Actually, is that too weak? It’s storming on.”

But trundling is probably right. Another victory has been notched up this morning, but the greatest battles lie ahead.

Rochester by-election: Ukip has started a class war - and is winning


By Tim Stanley

5:22AM GMT 21 Nov 2014





Thank goodness that’s over! Mark Reckless won the Rochester and Strood by-election after what felt like the longest election count in history: Robert Mugabe has faked national elections in a shorter time. But when the announcement finally came, the result was clear. Ukip first with about seven points over the Tories (as Ukip insiders were saying the day before voting); Labour embarrassed into third place; the Lib Dems garnering a pathetic 349 votes. I sincerely look forward to the day when my children say to me, “Daddy what was a Lib Dem?” And I can reply, “They were what people voted for before Ukip came along.”


The ghost of the Lib Dems might whisper that they were the leopards before the jackals – and Ukip is certainly starting to look like a more plebian third party. In his victory speech, Reckless claimed that the radical “working class tradition” has “found a home in Ukip”. And he’s not far wrong. Britain now has a political class war on its hands and – in perverse British fashion – it’s the Right, not the Left, that started it.


Cast your mind back to 2010. Ukip was a single issue party: anti-EU. Dig beneath the surface and it was composed of disaffected Thatcherite Tories – in favour of a flat tax and broadly libertarian in a way that stood to benefit the upper middle-class. Fast forward to 2014 and they are completely different. One suspects that their core appeal is on the subject of immigration; Europe is a background theme but by no means their standard; and they’ve adopted a populist philosophical position that confounds old golf course stereotypes of this party. Yet their leadership remains pure Maggie Thatcher! Nigel Farage is on camera saying that he’d like a privatised NHS and Douglas Carswell is a free market guru beloved of online libertarians. Mark Reckless looks and sounds (and probably thinks) like an awkward squad Tory MP from the 1990s – the kind that kept John Major on the verge of a nervous breakdown with countless threats of revolt over the EU’s war on imperial measurements. Somehow these posh, wide boys have managed to connect with an extraordinary coalition of angry middle-class and alienated working-class voters. How?


The answer must surely lie with collapsing faith in Westminster. The Credit Crunch, the expenses scandal, NHS horror stories, child abuse nightmares, even the dark hints of paedophile gangs at the heart of power – it all adds up to a sense that the establishment is irredeemably broken. And attempts by the mainstream parties to fix it are undone by their lack of cultural legitimacy. If there really is a class war going on, Labour has totally abandoned its position as the voice of the workers. On the day of the election, Emily Thornberry had to resign from the shadow cabinet after posting a bizarre tweet of a house covered in St George’s flags that many interpreted as a snobby comment about white van drivers. She may well have been totally innocent of ill-meaning, but by resigning/being sacked she helped add to the impression that Labour is now dominated by a metropolitan elite that looks down its noses at ordinary people. It’s the party of students and their professors, of NHS bureaucrats, welfare workers, actors, Marxist intellectuals, teachers who don’t believe in teaching, and male potters who get their kicks by dressing up as women and calling themselves artists. In short, Labour is bourgeois.


The Tories remain the Tories (the party of cuts and fox hunting) and the Lib Dems are just the past time of the half mad. Out of this slide towards metropolitanism, only Ukip has managed to project a sense of “getting” hard pressed voters. People don’t necessarily agree with Farage or even possibly like him. But they know what he is; they understand a man like that. And so long as Ukip is respected for being unpretentious, it also won’t be punished in the same way as the other parties are for doing things like u-turning or harbouring the odd racist.


To beat Ukip and retake command of the national political narrative, the mainstream parties have to reconnect with the people and to demonstrate that they share their concerns, are being honest about the problems ahead, and have faith in the common sense of ordinary people. Labour and the Tories have to remember that – to borrow an American phrase – the average man and the average woman is the king and queen of British politics. They are the masters and the successful politician is simply their servant.

what a vile horrible women that Kelly tolhust is now condemning the voters in stood
just imaging waking up with her by your side nightmare or what

grant shapps is the reason voters are ditching the party another vile up is own backside shite.

the uk I a cesspit ever party is full of MPs o are only in their for their selves and do nt give a toss about the public they insider dealing in shares knowing gov policy
yet the fca have never taken any action on their insider dealing .

we need a complete clean out of gov and start aain

Bulgaria Latvia romainia Poland have all released prisoners if they leave the country
over 50000 have been released and they are now in the uk the uk is now a prison

always said my fine fedora would easily be saved from the cooking pot :-)

She may well have been totally innocent of ill-meaning, but by resigning/being sacked she helped add to the impression that Labour is now dominated by a metropolitan elite that looks down its noses at ordinary people. It’s the party of students and their professors, of NHS bureaucrats, welfare workers, actors, Marxist intellectuals, teachers who don’t believe in teaching, and male potters who get their kicks by dressing up as women and calling themselves artists. In short, Labour is bourgeois.